What would you say if I said: “good writing was just a kind of cultural imperialism?”

January 31, 2015

Nicholas C. Burbules made that statement in a scholarly paper he wrote on the occupation of editing in a culturally diverse world.

Said another way: when I send in a piece of fiction for publication in a magazine, book, or for that matter … a professor to grade: if said piece of prose is not up to a particular editor’s level, or a particular instructor’s literary range of writing (off setting problems with grammar, punctuation, and correct word usage of course), then isn’t that indeed a form of cultural imperialism?

Who is really to say what good writing is? Has it to do with the rhetorical subscript set by some unseen source as to what is acceptable. Is it the readership of said piece that accounts for what is quality?

I dare say: “He who rules the present – rules the past; and in turn, rules the standards set to rule the present.” Is an oxymoron at work here?

I suppose there must be some standards by which we live our lives. Ahh … the irony of it all.